Rich Lee shares quick story of Eminem’s “Houdini” music video

Few days ago, Eminem released “Houdini” single with a music video, directed by long-running collaborator Rich Lee (“Not Afraid,” “Rap God,” “Phenomenal,” “Walk On Water,” “The Monster,” “Venom,” “My Life”). The innovative “Houdini” video freely calls back to classic Eminem videos such as Joseph Khan’s “Without Me” and Phillip Atwell’s “Real Slim Shady”. “Houdini” is packed with cameos including Dr. Dre, Pete Davidson, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Jimmy Iovine, Grip, Westside Boogie, Denaun Porter, Royce 5’ 9”, Paul Rosenberg, The Alchemist, EZ Mil, Ryan Keely, Samantha Mack, and comedian Shane Gillis. The generative AI used in the video was created by Metaphysic, with Jo Plaete and Chris Ume supervising production.

Rich Lee spoke on the video more by mentioning “What if Shady from the 2000s got teleported into the modern day and we got his take on what the world has become…and what if “Rap Boy” was the only person who could stop him? But, 20+ years have passed so theres a little less stamina and some bad knees. The crazy combination of new tech that made this music video possible. We are in such an awesome time now for filmmaking, and we were able to leverage so much of the great tech we have at hand.”

After the release of the music video, the director hit Instagram to share a quick beautiful story behind “Houdini”: “Our new Eminem video is out! Quick story! I moved to Los Angeles in 1999 and I was working as a sculptor and fabricator for Walt Disney Imagineering. I remember walking through the shop one day and some of the carpenters had the radio blasting (as that rowdy bunch usually does!) and the track that was playing was Eminem’s “My Name Is”. I remember that moment so vividly. I remember the faces of who was around, where I was standing, the smell of the workshop and Em’s voice echoing through it. I had no idea who he was at the time but it sounded so different than anything else. I literally stopped in my tracks and just stared at the radio, listening to this unhinged yet so precise voice assaulting my eardrums. I was mesmerized. I could never have predicted that 10 years later I’d be directing my first music video for him…or 20+ years later doing over a dozen projects with him. Wild.” said Rich Lee.

Then he continued: Looking at the comments on social media, the controversy, the love, the hate, etc., one thing that I’m seeing a lot of is a lot of people of my gen feeling a great sense of nostalgia for that early 2000s feeling. We obviously were leaning on some of his early iconography from that time, in a way it’s sort of a sequel to some of those videos (Are we rebooting music videos now?!). It was a lot to live up to and while challenging, it was a lot of fun to put this together.

“Anyways, I’m super lucky to be able to do this kind of work and collaborate with icons like Em. Dude is def the GOAT and totally ridiculous and fun to collaborate with! Quick thank you to the awesome team that helped get this across the finish line!” Rich Lee added.

The director also shared the ‘Eminem kids’ scene from the music video on his Instagram story with the caption: “By the way, it was crazy to shoot Eminem but to be honest it was surreal to have Hailie on our set too. Such a huge part of Eminem lore.” You can check the screenshot below: